Fourth in a Pig's Eye

Some years back, the Kemeny administration offered College employees an early retirement option. It was probably an effort to entice older faculty to vacate some tenured positions desperately needed to keep the academic succession percolating. Very few faculty elected to retire at 62, however, and the program was shortly dismantled. While it was available, though, a good many administrators snapped it up —among them Frederick L. Hier '44, director of public programs at Dartmouth, who retires this June, at 62, from a position he has held for 17 years.

"I've always felt that it was nutty to work until you are old and decrepit and have gout and emphysema," says Hier, leaning forward over his office desk. "I've been so lucky. I've never even had dandruff, and I haven't spent a day in the hospital since I was in the Navy. It was an attractive proposition to do what you want at 62. I jumped at it."

Hier describes himself as a tree farmer and a reader of poetry, an armchair mountaineer and a classical music nut, and he says that he and Henry David Thoreau are going off into the woods for the next 62 years. A deep-dyed outdoorsman, Hier was seduced away from the family school Syracuse by the Dartmouth Outing Club, which led him to choose Dartmouth for his undergraduate training. After the war, he did go to Syracuse for an M.S. in journalism but only because Dartmouth didn't offer graduate work in the humanities.

After a stint as director of public information for the New York State University system, Hier went to work in Germany as public information officer for the United Nations International Refugee Organization. He and his first wife, Joan Lovejoy Hier (who was an editor at the Magazine before her sudden death in 1976), spent the next 18 years abroad, during which Hier left the U.N. to work for Radio Free Europe in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany; he then went to the International Rescue Committee in Geneva; after that, he free-lanced as a radio news broadcaster; then he returned to Germany, this time with the United States Information Agency; finally, he was transferred to Vietnam as a United States Information Service field representative.

"Being overseas for that long was a marvelous experience," recalls Hier. "It was terribly pertinent work, dealing with people, not selling soap or stocks and bonds. In the most miniscule sort of way, you felt you were taking part in something important by helping refugees re-settle and start their lives anew." Hier pauses briefly, remembering. "Vietnam was a sad mess, though. And by then our three kids were almost high-school age. We knew the next assignment would be Outer Mongolia or Africa, somewhere where there wouldn't be schools for them, and we began to say to each other, 'Let's go home.' "

Home was Joan's grandparents' 200-acre farm in Cornish, New Hampshire, which the Hiers had bought back into the family in 1957. "I remember thinking at the time we bought it that someday it would be nice to come back here and work for Dartmouth," he says. "So when the College wrote to me while I was still in Saigon and offered me a job, Joan and I debated for about ten seconds whether to go on to Ouagadougou or come to Dartmouth." A week later, on May 5, 1967, he went to work for the College, tending to the care and feeding of convocations, freshman parents' weekends, Horizons programs, commencements, staff awards ceremonies, inaugurations, dedications, and special events. It is work behind the scenes, largely unsung, and for 17 years it has been done with care, and wit, and great good cheer.

Another part of his job has been the writing of The Bulletin, through which he established with the alumni of Dartmouth a special rapport. That voice will be missed in a lot of places.

Hier illustrates his stance toward work and life with a recollection of a personnel interview he once had with his supervisor, Vice President George Colton. "Fritz," he remembers Colton's saying, "I'm not so sure you work as hard as some others." Hier says he thought about that for a minute and then replied, "George, you're absolutely right. I rarely take any work home, and you won't find me here on the weekends. My number one priority is my family. Hands down. No contest. I guess I'm sorry for the fellows who think their jobs are the most important things. My tree farm is more important than Dartmouth. And fun is important, too, George." Colton responded, according to Hier, with respect and ad- miration for such a philosophy. He felt constrained to point out, however, that Hier might suffer when promotion and salary decisions were made. "I told him that sounded fair to me," says Hier. "I never wanted to be president of anything."

Word of this conversation got around, and Hier's three f's "family, farm and fun" became famous around old Crosby Hall, where the offices of Alumni Affairs used to be located. "Dartmouth," says Hier, deadpan, "comes fourth."

On balance, Hier reflects, his life has been a very happy one, despite a number of untimely family deaths. He was married a second time in 1982, to Anne Miller, and one of his three married sons has given him two grandchildren to cherish. "I've been awfully lucky," he says. "I've had two very lovely wives, two happy marriages. How many people can say they've had one?"

For Hier, who has led 11 freshman trips for Dartmouth and been on the College's annual Connecticut River canoe trip five times, the best memories of his working days at Dartmouth involve students. "It's fun to know at any one time 60 or 70 kids on campus without being their teacher," he explains. "If there's anything in my life to be vain about, it's that I can walk around campus and always have a bunch of kids say, 'Hi, Fritz.' That's a wonderful feeling." It is doubtless reciprocated. Hier has always championed the young. As he wrote when he first returned to New Hampshire, "Our bet is on most of the youth of today, long hair or short. They are involved and participating, and that's our hope in this agonized world."

He smiles and leans back, tanned and sturdy, among the many photographs of family that crowd his windowsill and bulletin board. Daffodils from the farm grace the cluttered desk, and on the phonograph in the corner waits a Beethoven recording, interrupted by our interview. Three large posters dominate the wall. One is a starkly graceful photograph of a leafless tree; another displays an intriguing crosssection of woodpile; and the third, a photograph of a mist-frosted stand of pines, bears an apt quotation from Cicero: "He plants trees to benefit another generation."

Fritz Hier '44